Active Rain Inspired Me to Build this Product
When I joined Active Rain in late January / early February of this year, I ran a decent web company that had done some work for realtors over the years, but like most web companies, realtors were just another group of people that we serviced. There was no particular attachment or insight past the client requirements and research that we would do for any client from Plumbers to eCommerce sites.
At the suggestion of Mitch Gover from BidonRealty.com (view his blog here), I joined. Initially, the goal was just to get a better understanding on what realtors were in the need of and how to market our web services to them more effectively. As I started reading more and more, I saw a bit of a trend. Realtors were more tech savvy than any other group that we serviced, BUT they weren't necessarily technical people. Meaning that realtors understood the need, but just didn't have those skills in their tool box, and really why would they?
I also learned that Realtors were very aggressive with QR Codes which was a technology that we started playing with back in October and were looking for a good application of that technology. Add to the QR piece that realtors were prime candidates to be successful in their business through Facebook and I was hooked.
But realtors are struggling or so the news tells me
All of the doom and gloom yet you realtors weren't smart enough to get out the rain. Why would you still be doing this job? I mean, you can't make any money at it right?
What I did learn is that realtors are aggressive, but right now, they don't have a ton of disposable cash to support their aggressive nature.
So the problem was outlined for me
Build a product that incorporated QR Codes, Social Media and Mobile Phones AND do it Cheap
I am nothing if not determined so we laid out the plans and with the real estate background that Mitch Gover has, the target was formulated. We had the foundation of QuickerListing.com.
Three months later and we still hadn't launched. I broke the cardinal rule of development. I allowed for scope creep. I currently have 2 pages of line items of features, functionality, tweeks and enhancements that we want to add.
So I had to do it. I set a hard Deadline (I missed it by 3 days by the way) We were going to launch on May 1.
As of 10:30 am EST, I finally got the go ahead that all of the tests run came back with no problems. No more errors to chase. No more hiccups to work through. It was ready to launch....sort of.
Sort of? What does that mean?
"Well the product is in place, but we haven't hooked up the documentation for the FAQ's and How To's and we haven't hooked up the payment module for people to pay us."
That sounds finished to me
I am a marketer by trade. That was all I needed to hear. I mean, it is a new product, of course we aren't going to charge for it on Day 1. We need users to break it in ways we hadn't tested for so we can do the final cleaning. Training documentation is great and it will be there in the coming days, but in my experience, nobody reads it. I know this because I monitor help desk requests and they are word for word from documentation about 90% of the time.
So without further ado I present to you QuickerListing.com
Technology this is Real Estate. Real Estate, this is Technology. I am sure you are going to get along great.
Please don't take this as a gratuitous product plug but rather an insight into how Active Rain had influence in the development of products for the Real Estate Industry. Thank you Active Rainers.
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